Trumpet

During the past year, Chicago listeners have heard trumpeter Victor Garcia in more musical contexts than any single player could be expected to master. He hit hard in drummer Dana Hall's band at the Green Mill last month; debuted his own feisty, full-throttle septet at the University of Chicago's Logan Center last September; explored music of Melba Liston in saxophonist Geof Bradfield's epic suite "Melba!" at the Green Mill last September; and co-led the muscular Chicago Afro Latin Jazz...

Lincoln Park Zoo welcomed four adorable trumpeter swan cygnets to the McCormick Swan Pond last week. Catch them whie you can: This fall, they will be released in Iowa as a part of a collaborative reintroduction program with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Lincoln Park Zoo has released more than 40 trumpeter swans in efforts to preserve the species.

Is there a gentler, warmer, more disarming sound in Chicago jazz than the trumpet of Bobby Lewis? The music he makes has won him wide admiration through the decades, with Peggy Lee perhaps summing it up best. Lewis, she once said, has "a sound like no other. I like him best when he plays in pastels, but every note is beautiful … is loving. " Indeed they are, as Lewis demonstrates on his aptly named new album, "Mellifluous Tones," which he's celebrating with an engagement this...

The following items were gathered from Bolingbrook police reports: A trumpet placed alongside a parked vehicle was reported stolen May 24 in the 700 block of East Boughton Road. The loss was valued at $2,500. A 33-year-old Bolingbrook man was charged with public indecency and resisting a peace officer on May 28 after he urinated on a vehicle in a parking lot in the 600 block of East Boughton Road at 9:12 p.m. A 2007 silver Caravan was...

Roy Hargrove, one of the great trumpeters of the under-50 generation, has made a tradition of closing each year with a residency at the Jazz Showcase. That an artist of his stature - who is in constant demand in concert halls and festivals around the world - would choose to spend six nights at a small club says a great deal about how he feels about the Showcase and the city in which it has been based since 1947. Not surprisingly, Chicagoans packed the room to overflowing on...

. . . For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? --First Corinthians, 14:8 . . . Our president went to West Point this week, looked over all his works in shaping American foreign policy and the world in general ... and pronounced it good. "This is American leadership," he concluded. "This is American strength." Gentle (and unbiased) Reader can look around at the results of this president's decisions, or rather...

Trumpet legend Clark Terry, regarded as one of the top innovators in contemporary jazz, will team up with the Elmhurst College Jazz Band for a free concert on the college mall as part of the college's 125th anniversary celebration. 7 p.m. Saturday, Elmhurst College, 190 Prospect Ave.

By Robert-Jan Bartunek BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Ear-splitting vuvuzelas were an ever-present backdrop to the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa. Four years on, two Belgian entrepreneurs hope to fill stadiums in Brazil with the high-pitched noise from plastic trumpets dubbed "diabolica". Fabio Lavalle, 26, and David dos Santos, 31, from the southern Belgian town of Mons, have invented a collapsible, pocket size trumpet, which, not unlike an air horn, produces a sound at...

Anyone who values brilliant trumpet playing will face a tough decision on Saturday night, for two of the most distinctive virtuosos of the under-50 generation will be playing opposite one another in the Chicago area that night. Since he was 16 years old, Nicholas Payton has stood as a singular voice in New Orleans jazz, the clarion quality of his tone matched by the phenomenal technique of his delivery. But since those earliest days of his career,...

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Formula One pacesetters Mercedes will try out a new 'megaphone' style exhaust in testing next week as the sport seeks ways of raising noise levels and placating fans angered by the new quieter V6 engines. The team said on their Twitter feed that the 'prototype solution' to boost tailpipe noise would be put on the car at a scheduled test in Barcelona after Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix, the fifth race of the year. Reports had earlier suggested they could do so...

Miles Davis, a revolutionary trumpeter and jazz visionary who changed the course of the music several times over, died Saturday of pneumonia and a stroke in Santa Monica, Calif. Mr. Davis, 65, had been taken to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica a month ago. His illness was not disclosed, but Mr. Davis had been in and out of hospitals for many years, suffering from several drug addictions. "For all of Miles` quirks and all his idiosyncracies, there is almost no way to express his...

PARIS (Reuters) - As General Electric tries to convince French leaders to back its offer to rescue engineering firm Alstom , it hopes that three letters will convince them of its good will: CFM. The initials mask a successful U.S.-French venture that will soon mark 40 years making jet engines. Co-owned by GE and Snecma, a unit of French aerospace group Safran , CFM has grown from a risky attempt to break into new civil markets into an aviation powerhouse with...

Obsession (Wallace Roney, Muse). Wallace Roney does as good a Miles Davis as I`ve ever heard. The muted trumpet on "Alone Together" is downright eerie. But the music is so good that you forgive him for it and just enjoy the sound. This new recording also features Gary Thomas on reeds, Donald Brown on piano, Christian McBride on bass and Cindy Blackman on drums. It is as good as one of the better Davis bands.

There is a noble tradition in jazz in which seasoned musicians train the next generation in the best way possible: on the bandstand. Drummer Art Blakey famously burnished the careers of uncounted musicians, among them Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Wayne Shorter, Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. Trumpeter Wallace Roney - also an alum of Blakey's Jazz Messengers - clearly wishes to carry forth that legacy, for the quintet he brought to the Jazz...

"Trumpet of the Swan," in movie theaters Friday, gets a jump on this summer's more heavily hyped family films, such as "Shrek" and "Atlantis." This animated adaptation of E.B. White's beloved book, co-directed by former Disney animator Richard Rich ("The Swan Princess"), is a much more modest production, but parents of preschoolers might not want to wait for the video release. It is one of the precious few, if not only, G-rated films on the summer schedule. Jason Alexander is in...

If the jazz musician's job is to make up melodies better than the ones he started with, trumpeter Chet Baker often goes further than that, beginning at a level of paraphrase that is so tenuously but gracefully linked to his tune of choice that it can be difficult to recognize his source material. A fine example--no, make that a magnificent one--of what Baker can do was his performance Tuesday night of "My Funny Valentine," which has been his signature song ever since he recorded...

One of the busiest jazz musicians in Chicago plays an instrument that's rarely heard in concert or on record. Yet Ryan Shultz barely can keep up with the demands for his services as bass trumpeter par excellence. Chances are that if you've dropped in on any number of Chicago jazz clubs over the past couple of years, you've seen and heard the fellow with the outsized horn toiling as sideman. To its great credit, The Bulls, on North Lincoln Park West, on Tuesday night began presenting Shultz as leader and...